Category: Gratitude

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. In 2016 I boycotted it.

My father died five-and-a-half weeks before, and I didn’t feel like celebrating. Instead of spending the day in the warm glow of memories and the gentle embrace of friends, I decided to go to the movies. The idea of sitting in the dark, watching someone else’s life, and feeling anything other than numb sounded good. So when some friends invited me to see a movie with them, it was as if the heavens were smiling on me, endorsing my plan.

We saw Manchester by the Sea.

I do not know if you know this movie, but it is relentlessly bleak. It makes Sophie’s Choice seem like Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. It is not the movie to see when you are boycotting Thanksgiving because your father has just died.

(For you cinephiles, I know. It’s brilliant. Two Oscars, six nominations, critical acclaim, huge hit at the box office, blah blah blah. Don’t see it when you’re mourning. Or when you feel like being in a good mood. It’s bleak as fuck.)

In some ways, the movie did what I wanted it to: It made me feel something other than numb. Problem is, it made me feel even worse. I guess my goal should have been more specific than “anything other than numb.”

It was a pretty miserable Thanksgiving.

And a perfect one.

I mean, friends cared enough to take me to the movies, so that’s good (although Dr. Strange or Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which were playing that weekend, would have been better choices in the moment). And in retrospect, I think it’s hilarious that I tried to drown my sorrows in a movie about death, depression, guilt, and tragedy. Set in New England.

I laugh that I chose to soak in misery, that I tried to boycott a day devoted to gratitude. A friend of mine says you find what you look for. That Thanksgiving Day, I looked for misery, and I found it.

Today, another Thanksgiving Day, I look back at the year. It has been sad. I grieved the death of someone I love. Friends have been diagnosed with cancer. My mother, who is kind and accomplished and beautiful, broke her hip. I had—and have—problems with my eyes.

Today, another Thanksgiving Day, I look back at the year. It has been beautiful. My brother Andy received a spectacular honor. I celebrated an old friend’s wedding. I made new friends. I traveled. I comforted people I love when they mourned. I cheered a friend’s success. I read books. I drank hot apple cider. I spent more than a month with my mother, and was reminded how kind and accomplished and beautiful she is.

I will celebrate in Malibu today, with friends I have known for a very long time, in a house overlooking the Pacific Ocean. I will acknowledge the challenges, some more difficult than others, that face us all. But I will look for the beauty. And though I have problems with my eyes, I will find it.

Every year on this day, I post a column I wrote 20 years ago. It may be self-indulgent. Or maybe sentimental. At the very least, it’s a much better tradition than watching Manchester by the Sea. I hope you enjoy and I wish you a happy and meaningful Thanksgiving.

***

WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA—Even here, a place I am assured is paradise, I find myself missing Maine—a place I know actually is.

Do not get me wrong. There is much to love about California. Waves crash below Pacific Coast Highway symphonically, as beautifully as their Atlantic cousins do at Bar Harbor. The “Hollywood” sign, perched in the verdant hills above my new hometown, manages to be both precarious and majestic. And Malibu, where billionaires share ocean views with skunks and rabbits, offers sunsets so lovely and nights so clear I sometimes think the breeze is God’s very breath.

Still, I miss Maine.

I miss Maine in September, when the fragrance of apples fills the air. I miss it in June, when daylight lingers forever, and the ferry to Peaks Island magically spirits passengers farther than the 15 minutes would suggest. I miss it in December, when snowflakes caress lollipop lights in the Old Port, and the whole town seems to gather in the window of Gritty McDuff’s.

But I most miss it now—whenever now may be.

This particular now is Thanksgiving. I know it is fashionable among some to deride Thanksgiving, to dismiss it as hokey or worse. I know that some people complain that it has become too commercial and has lost its meaning.

Those people lose.

For all its hokiness, for its emphasis on turkey, this very American holiday still has meaning. If it weren’t so important, this would not be the busiest travel weekend of the year. People do not abide cramped airplanes and congested freeways for the trivial.

I lived a dozen Thanksgivings in Maine. I spent them in mansions in Falmouth, in apartments in Munjoy Hill, in condos on Brackett Street. I’m thankful for them all.

One Tuesday about 10 years ago, two days before Thanksgiving, I had no holiday plans. I called my friends Neil and Stacey, who had been married all of a month.

“I have nowhere to go for Thanksgiving,” I told Stacey.

“Ohhhhh,” she said, genuinely sad for me. Suddenly she brightened.

“You’ll come here.”

I knew she would say that, knew she would invite me to her home on Emerson Street. That is why I called.

My friend Stacey is a combination of Martha Stewart and Uma Thurman—a smart, fierce, intelligent and beautiful woman who since that Thanksgiving produced a child who surpasses even Neil and Stacey in those qualities. I knew she’d build a memorable Thanksgiving.

And she did.

Stacey had turned her little apartment on the hill into something Martha herself would envy. She didn’t merely bake cookies, she individually cut them into festive shapes—little turkeys and pilgrims and cornucopias. I wouldn’t be surprised if she personally churned the butter. The place glowed in pumpkin-scented candlelight and the guests basked in the warmth despite the cold November night.

But the perfection of that Thanksgiving was not in the alarmingly delicious turkey or the tasteful decorations. It was in the joy of the moment: The promise of a new marriage, the laughter of comfortable friendship, the purity of offering thanks.

We all have had our challenges in the years since then, but days like that Thanksgiving offer strength and hope.

Thanksgiving in Maine always does.

It does in California, too, and in Florida, where today, I will spend the holiday with my family.

Today is the first Thanksgiving in 14 years I’ve spent with them, although my heart was with them for each.

Today, in Miami—another place I’m assured is paradise—my heart is in Maine.

Thanksgiving is somehow less cozy when it’s warm outside, but it’s just as meaningful.

Today I give thanks. For my family, for my friends, for nieces and nephews I barely know. For apple-scented air. For the promise and hope of the coming new year. I am thankful for Thanksgivings past and future, for crashing waves, for skunks in Malibu and—today especially—for Maine Thanksgivings.